The honest answer for most is “probably not” or “only a select few”.

Summary:

What the world needs is love, true love, practiced by all – or even just by some. True love is in very short supply because people choose to be in their cage of fear, self-pride and selfishness. Almost everyone claims that they “love others” or that they are “a person who loves”, but our claiming something does not make it true. If it were true that people practiced true love as The Light of the world defines and demonstrated it, the world would be a radically different place. Practicing love means that I will actually manifest love as a life-style, not merely when I feel like it or as mere interruptions or irregular occurrences in my overall selfish life.

So, we each have a choice. Continue in our delusion that we “love other people”, or turn away from that delusion and actually start to practice love. And, as we shall see, having someone as a sex partner (typically called a “boyfriend” or “girlfriend”) does NOT count for manifesting love.

Introduction

I get my definition of love from the real, historical Jesus (Joshua) of Nazareth. He taught about the concept of love over 40 times in the four gospel books, thus making it his top teaching. Equally important, he lived out his teachings of love.

Joshua of Nazareth both lived out and taught the following:

To all people, “For God so loved the people of the world that He sent His only begotten Son, so that whosoever should place their faith in him would not perish in their wrongness, but rather have everlasting life.”

To all people, “The greatest commandment is to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind and strength.”

To all people, “And the second commandment is to love your neighbor as you love yourself.”

To all people, “There is no greater love than for someone to lay down their life for a friend.”

To all people, “Love your enemies.”

To all people, “If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? For even those who practice immorality love those who love them.”

To his disciples, “A new command I give to you, that you love one another as I have loved you for this is how people will know that you are my disciples if you love one another.”

As you can see, the concept of “love” was at the TOP of Jesus’ list of important concepts for humanity. Love is the most important concept for human relationships – it is the most important thing that human beings ought to be doing according to our Creator. Truth is the most important concept regarding properly understanding reality including how human relationships ought to be. Rightness is the most important concept regarding what human behaviors are right and which are wrong. Love is the most important of the “right” behaviors.

What Joshua taught the heart or the core of love is, is to value others higher than yourself and based on that valuing, to act selflessly towards them (to want to help them) having compassion on them. So, simply put:

“God so valued the people of the earth that He SENT (act of selfless behavior motivated by compassion) His unique Son, so that whoever places their faith in the Son will not perish (condemn themselves and experience the just consequence of that) in their wrongness, but will enter into everlasting life.” John 3:16 For Life is gained and darkness left by finding the freedom gained by turning in faith to the Light.

Love is the most powerful force in our realm, and IF it was embraced and practiced, it would solve almost all of the human conflict that occurs on this earth each day. Love, empowered by faith in Joshua of Nazareth and the Father he reveals, is THE solution to human conflict, wrong-doing and loneliness IF people would just do it. No more fighting each other for resources, money, power, fame, notoriety, and the thousands of other things people fight over. No more seeking to wrongly take from others, but instead practicing giving to others. No more reacting with coldness, anger, vengeance or violence when our self-pride is offended.

People caring about others as they care about themselves, so no more ignoring, abuse and neglect. Sharing the things I have with others instead of hoarding them to myself or selfishly protecting the stuff from others – so no more human suffering from lack of food, clothing or shelter. Human life would be radically transformed IF people would just listen to the Messenger of our Creator and do what he says.

Let’s look at some important truths about love.

What Love is Not

What most people call love is not the high or true form of love described by Joshua of Nazareth. People have defined love in dozens of ways, thus bringing both confusion and error to this most important concept. One of the best ways to hide, corrupt or destroy an important or valuable concept is to re-define it into things that it is not, particularly lesser things which lesser things don’t have significant value. This is exactly what the people of the world do with the all important concept of “love”.

Or stated another way, if we use an important term/word that is associated with something really important, but we change it’s meaning to something less and use the term frequently associated with that lesser thing, then won’t people forget or not know to begin with? How will they know what the real thing the term/word is supposed to mean? For example, if almost all people are almost always using the word “love” in this way, ‘Oh, I love… ice cream…pizza…that movie…that car…that blouse…etc.’; then is not the term love – which really means to value others and to behave selflessly towards them – essentially destroyed? If I ‘love’ ice cream, that means I value it more than myself and thus behave selflessly towards it?!

The culture and attributes that the Hollywood people of the U.S. promote and constantly proclaim in their stories is not true love or the manifestations of true love. Maybe one out of several hundred scenes in movies that claim to portray ‘love’ will provide examples of true love. Instead what is promoted is the false or lesser meaning of the all-important concept of love – sexual desire, selfish-infatuation, ‘romantic’ feelings, occasionally being kind, etc.

The most popular and erroneous definition or understanding of the concept of “love” is that it is merely an emotion of ‘feeling good’ about someone or something. This is perhaps the lowest meaning given to the concept of love. It changes love from conscious actions based on moral truth (that selflessness is morally superior to selfishness), to merely feelings, which feelings are both subjective and self-oriented. So, love is changed from a life-changing concept to guide our behavior, to merely self-feeling about things I experience.

Actual acts of love can have an emotional component to them, and the emotional component to love is compassion or empathy, NOT ‘it makes ME feel good’. Remember the proper definition of love? “To value others higher than yourself and based on that valuing, to act selflessly towards them (to want to help them) having compassion on them.” The compassion component to love has an emotional element, but that emotion – like all emotions – are meant to flow from (or react from) an understanding of the experience or behavior. So, for example, if I decide to give up my seat on the bus to an elderly person, then I will often experience good feeling/emotion associated with that CHOSEN BEHAVIOR and my understanding of that behavior choice.

To allow emotions to guide our behavior is as wrong as it would be for the dog to allow it’s tail to direct it’s actions. Or, to allow emotions to guide our behavior is as wrong as letting the wind guide our course on the sailboat instead of the map and navigational aids. In short, the many people who are allowing their emotions to guide both what they believe is true or right, and what choices they make, are totally lost people in the truest sense of the term LOST. They have abandoned reason and sound ethics for madness/emotional feelings and have rejected the most important aspect given to human beings that set us apart from the animals – a clear understanding of our morality. Again, when we put reason aside or submit it to feelings; and when our moral choices are determined by our subjective feelings instead of some objective moral standard; then we are lost and are descending into deep darkness.

Perhaps the greatest perversion of the concept of “love” that is regularly promoted by hollywood, is sexual desire e.g. ‘let’s make love’. That is not love but instead it is merely sexual desire, lust and self-gratification, which is almost always selfish in its motivations and selfishness, is the opposite of love. At best, having sex could be considered a form of expressing affection, but even affection is often not selfishly motivated like sex typically is.

‘Oh, Yes, I am a Person Who Loves!’

If you pulled 100 people off the street and asked them, “Are you a person of love?” or, “Are you a person who loves others?” probably 90+ percent will answer, “Yes”. Why? Because people know at some level (through the conscience given to us) that to “love” is extremely important – even though they don’t have a good grasp on what it is – and they want to be known as a person who “loves”.

The sad fact is, most people do NOT practice love and in fact practice the opposite, selfishness.

Many will point to their ‘good works’ as evidence that they love others, but those ‘good works’ are occasional (spontaneous) events, NOT intentional as something lived out as a primary aspect of daily life. In other words, their version of ‘love’ is a kind act here or there as their emotions move them or spending a few hours a week doing charitable service things. What it does NOT include is personal sacrifice (which demonstrates the “selfless” aspect of love) and personal sharing with others in real, daily life. Those who claim to “love” don’t have a life significantly different than those who don’t claim to love. That proves that something significant is amiss.

If you actually want to practice love towards a person, you will WANT to be with them and generally you will need to be with them. And if they also want to practice love, they will want to be with you, for that is what happens when two or more people commit to practicing love towards others. Love brings people together and causes them to share their lives, it does not keep them regularly out of the daily life of the person they claim to ‘love’. Like I said above, practicing love means that I will actually express love as a life-style, not merely when I feel like it or as mere interruptions or irregular occurrences in my overall selfish life.

So, if you are a person who claims to “love other people” or you say to some blood or legal relative, “I love you”, but you are not regularly sharing your life with them and helping them in all ways when you are able (when you are not working, for example), then you are NOT practicing love…you are not a “loving person” all your objections notwithstanding. You are a selfish person who has bought into all the the lies of this dark world.

Many object and say, ‘oh, well, I have to be away at work for long periods of time, but I love my wife and children’, for example. Well, if you are truly doing that to provide BASIC food, shelter and clothing for them and you don’t have other work options, then yes, you are expressing true love. If, however, you have work options that you don’t like as much but will meet the basic needs of the family and will allow you to be around your wife and children more, then you don’t love your wife and children as much as you love yourself or your work.

And if, however, you are away at work for long periods of time to justify big expensive houses or cars or other unnecessary material things – then you do NOT love your wife and children and are deceiving yourself and you really love those things more than the people you claim to love. Or, if your children really need their dad around on a daily basis during particular live events or exceptional periods of time; and the dad does not sacrifice (including giving up) his money-making work for those times; then he does not love his children more than himself or his work.

I would suggest that most people who tell their children, ‘I work so much because I want you to have the things I could not have when I was growing up’; are saying that because they love the material things they work for; or for the power or prestige of their work; NOT out of love for their children. And the suicide rate of young people among the ‘affluent’ U.S. citizens would tend to validate that claim. The childen know what their parents love more than them.

In short, we all have work choices. If we choose work that will take us away for significant periods of time from those we claim to love, then the simple truth is that we love ourselves or our work MORE than we love our family. You cannot effectively practice love when you are not with the people you claim to love.

Many who are married will claim that their marriage proves that they practice love, since they love their spouse. This brings us to another important truth that Joshua of Nazareth taught. He taught that natural, blood or legal relationships have a component of selfishness to them, meaning there is an informal understanding that I will get something out of that relationship if real need comes – kind of like an insurance policy. So, that statement might be something like, ‘But you are my sister/uncle/grandpa, so you need to ___________________ (fill in the blank)’. That type of natural or perceived legal obligation IS NOT LOVE, for you expect to get something back from your blood or legal relatives. Love doesn’t so that, it just shares everything including life.

In general, blood and legal relationships are bound by obligation, not love. Love gives freely without asking anything in return and it is given freely to all, not just ‘relatives’. In fact, Joshua knew we would tend to only ‘love’ (really, feel obligated to serve) our natural blood relatives so he spoke strongly against the natural family. On the other hand, if you are not practicing love towards your natural family, you are failing at a great level since even strong natural inclinations are not enabling you to do what is right, which is practice love toward those for which is should be easy.

True love IS putting another person’s needs higher than my own…it IS valuing them, or caring about them MORE than I care about myself and what I want. It is NOT occasionally doing kind things for them as that kindness makes an inconsistent, occasional and intermittent showing into my overall life of selfishness. Practicing love means I will have largely overcome selfishness and am thus acting selflessly more than I act selfishly. As I mature and grow in true love, the selfish attitudes and acts will diminish until my life looks like Joshua’s.

‘I Love You…’

When most people say, “I love you” to another person, what they are NOT saying is, “I value you more than I value myself; I will put your needs over my needs and I will serve you and help you in daily life”. Again, that is NOT what people typically mean when they tell another person, “I love you”. Furthermore, they typically only tell blood and legal relatives that they love them.

When the people of the world say “I love you” to someone, what they are really saying is some version of, “I feel good towards you right now or I believe I need you for something, and I would like you to do what I want, so I am going to say this in order to make you believe I care about you more than I care about myself (when in reality I don’t)”. In other words, when the phrase, “I love you” is uttered by many people, it is being used to manipulate (usually through guilt) and deceive another person…it is often a subconscious ploy to have other people think well of you so you can get what you want from them. Or it is a way to make yourself look good and make the other person feel obligated to listen to you and do what YOU want. What we can know for sure is that hardly anyone is actually practicing love as Joshua defined it and thus all this talk about ‘love’ obviously is talking about something else.

A great current example of people who use the world love to another person while clearly NOT actually practicing love is when a married couple divorce and while they are divorcing, they say, ” Oh, we still love each other”. That is a complete lie and contradiction. Couples who practice love towards one another do not stay apart because as we have established, one of the marks of people practicing love is coming and being together. The breakup of a marriage is almost always a selfish act by one or both parties and selfishness is the opposite of love. So, when divorcing couples says, “Oh, we still love one another”, they are simply trying to cover up and hide their selfishness in an attempt to appear like good people in order to continue to get what they want for themselves.

What many confuse for “love” is emotional or commitment bonding or merely infatuation. This is what actually happens between men and women who are said to “fall in love”. The “fall in love” phrase is yet another phrase that degrades the highest form of love, for love has nothing to do with “falling” or “accidental” or “random”, “meant-to-be”, or “magical”, etc. A lower level bond was made when they agreed to have sex, and if they started to develop components of friendship, then a higher level bond was formed that probably involved occasional acts of love/selflessness.

If men and women commit to each other and develop friendship, then love will have played a role in that IF they act selflessly towards one another. So, while love absolutely can and should be practiced by couples, most often their original pairing has nothing to do with love, but is rather an emotional bonding manifest by an agreement to share one another’s bodies for the purpose of physical pleasure. If there was a commitment to be faithful to one another that is a good sign that valuing each other plays some important part in the relationship.

Please DON’T confuse “love” with emotionally-based bonding or infatuations. There are many couples who are together who practice very little love towards one another and are in a primarily duty bound relationship. These folks probably started out with an emotional bonding, but did not learn to practice love. They attempt to navigate mutually selfish lives and behavior, and often share only when they see some selfish advantage for doing so. Sadly, this probably compromises the majority of husband and wife relationships. That statement is supported by the divorce rates; the ‘I’ll do for you if you do for me’ attitude; the lack of interest in each other’s lives; as well as the animosity shown between so many spouses.

Many confuse or substitute affection for love. Affection is a physical act like hugging. Both people who practice love and those who don’t show affection to others, so affection can be motivated by things other than love. Judas Iscariot kissed Joshua, normally a sign of affection, but the kiss was used to betray Joshua to the unrighteous leaders. So, love is not affection and affection is not love – affection is a physical act that can have different motivations and it can never be used to somehow prove that you value someone more than yourself. Affectionate acts can be roboted-out by someone with no compassion towards the person you are hugging or kissing. Affection is most often expressed through the motivations of obligation or tradition and not due to compassion. In short, you can be a very affectionate person, kissing and hugging everyone you know while still not loving them.

Do You Truly Love Me?

Joshua asked Peter the above question three times, and Peter was duly upset by the questions.

One of the main manifestations of loveless-ness in this culture is what happens between many parents and their children. Common practice in the U.S. is for parents to send their children away to college when they are 18 or so. Let’s, for the moment, say that is a good justification for sending them away (when it really very often is not). What is the reason for pushing out of the house the child who loves and respects his parents and is not attending college? It certainly is not love. Is it not loveless-ness and selfishness? And what is the reason that children leave their parents – move away so they cannot help their parents – if their parents love them and want to help them? Guess what it is not! It is not love, but rather selfishness, and it matters not if the parents approve of the parting of ways (usually caused by self-pride), it is still a love-less or selfish choice.

The child whose parents spent about 18 years of their life actually loving, providing for and raising those children, says, “I love you mom” or “I love you dad” as they walk away from their parents and thus leave those parents to fend for themselves in this dark and cold world. Call it what you will, but to say “love” is somehow involved is a lie. Those children are being selfish and their choices make it clear they value themselves or what they want more than their parents.

And parents who did not practice compassion towards their children while they were raising them, and who in not-so-subtle a manner push their children out the door when they reach 18 years of age, are not acting in love either. And that dynamic, dear reader, is exactly the love-less dynamic the U.S. culture promotes and puts on display constantly…it is ‘just the way it is’ for the vast majority and parents and their children. Selfishness rules over love. So many of the people of the U.S. are cold-hearted materialists and narcissists – the opposite of being a loving person.

In truth, children who actually love their parents will, at a minimum, communicate with them on a daily basis and actively help those parents on a regular basis. And at a minimum, if those parents who spent at least 18 years of their lives caring for their children need help in being cared for, then their children will care for them if they actually love them for the last years of their parents lives. If those children don’t do these things, then they can say to their parents a million times that “I love you”, but it is a self-serving lie.

The simple truth is they value themselves more than anyone else, and thus they don’t love others including the one’s who likely practiced love towards them for at least the first 18 years of their lives. For example, one of the most egregious proofs of children’s lack of love for their parents it to put their parents in a nursing home – I would call that utter loveless-ness and frankly evil – and to claim that “love” is motivating their decision to put their parents in a nursing ‘home’ is truly sickening and one of the most egregious examples of self-deceived selfishness.

Final Thoughts:

Love is often manifested in the important concept of friendship. Friends will regularly seek to help each other, and will regularly act in a selfless way towards their friends, at least if they are good friends as opposed to merely acquaintances or merely friends based on mutual-selfish desires. When we value/love someone, we don’t want to be apart from them, because then we cannot help them in real, daily life.

Love brings people together to share all that we have. Selfishness pushes people away and keeps them alone and protecting THEIR stuff; seeks to use others; and shares primarily when self-gain is perceived. The natural manifestation of people who actually value each other is to practice love towards one another and that will bring them together, not keep them apart, and cause them to share all that they have. And no, this is not restricted to opposite sex pairings. In fact, opposite sex pairings (“boyfrield”/”girlfriend”) is usually two mutually selfish people reducing their selfishness by just a little bit IF their relationship is very healthy. For most, the relationship is motivated by purely selfish motives and so you simply have two people living selfish lives together.

People who actually love others don’t turn their backs and walk away to pursue selfish and meaningless things, like power and money and entertainment, over actually practicing love toward those they say they value. There are few circumstances where people who truly love one another actually need to be apart. The vast majority of the non-togetherness of people who claim to love each other is because one or all parties value themselves more than others and thus are not actually practicing love. This does not mean they are never apart, or that there are not times they must be apart. But this will be temporary and hopefully the motivation is to share truth and show other people love, the most important ‘thing’ given to human kind.

I can hear the incredulity. ‘What are you talking about…what do you expect everyone to live in a commune?’ Well, I expect those who claim to be somehow following the real, historical Jesus of Nazareth to do what he says, for he does say, “If you love me, you will obey me” and “love one another”. So, what disciples of The Light should do is to listen to the One who said, “A new command I give to you, that you love one another as I have loved you; for this is how people will know that you are my disciples, but only IF you love one another.” So, yes, all disciples of Joshua ought to be living with other disciples and supporting other disciples, for this is what the love he taught does.

If you are not truly a follower of the real, historical Joshua of Nazareth, but instead have created a ‘jesus’ to fit your life-style (the average Christian), then you will not practice love even while you insist you are. The average Christian lives no differently than the people they claim ‘need to be saved’, and what they love is self-evident – themselves, their money, their careers which enable them to make money and to gain power, their religion (building temples and their rituals), their hobbies, etc. just like non-christians.

In general, not much love exists or is manifest becasue most have not experienced the power of the love of their heavenly Father (through forgiveness), and thus are not empowered to love others. “Those who have been forgiven much, love much.” And of course the opposite is also true, that those who have not received forgiveness love little.

Those who claim to be followers of Joshua ought to be practicing love as he said, and yet tragically, most are not. The primary way for people to be able to see how far they fall short from God’s Way, is supposed to be by looking at disciples WHO ARE PRACTICING LOVE. Without that manifestation, there is NO WITNESS, just like Joshua said, “…for this is how people will know that you are my disciples, but only IF you love one another”. Again, no love, no witness – just darkness, coldness, empty materialism and selfishness.

When we value/love people, we don’t value/love other things, or at least we should not. The Father made it so that we should value people above all other things, including animals.

Those who value/love things other than people are taking love away from what really needs to be loved, people. It is much easier to value a dog, for example, than it is to actually value people. It is easier to value a car or a house or money than it is to actually love a person, and so that is what most people do.

Since love is the most powerful concept and force given to humanity, and because things would be so much better if people did practice love, one would think people would practice it more. The fact that people make up false substitutes and corrupted concepts for the real concept of love proves this point Joshua made some 2,000 years ago, “And this is the (self) condemnation, that the people of the earth love the darkness rather than the light, because their deeds are evil”. And the core of that evil is loveless-ness.

Please turn away from a largely loveless life, turn to your Father and His Light Joshua, experience remorse for your selfishness, and come, join The Family!

Please, enter into his Life and come, join the Peaceful Revolution!